Head Hunters was a pivotal point in Herbie Hancock's career, bringing him into the vanguard of jazz fusion. Hancock had pushed avant-garde boundaries on his own albums and with Miles Davis, but he had never devoted himself to the groove as he did on Head Hunters. Drawing heavily from Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown, Hancock developed deeply funky, even gritty, rhythms over which he soloed on electric synthesizers, bringing the instrument to the forefront in jazz…
Amidst a new album bursting with hope, joy, romance and inspiration, including eleven songs penned or co-penned by the artist, it’s the Johnny Nash cover “I Can See Clearly Now” that Jonathan Butler elected to record on the So Strong album, his 15th solo collection, that speaks volumes about his outlook after a tumultuous year wrought with immense personal loss, pain and suffering.
Recorded in the summer of 1972 and released the following year, Nigel Lived is Murray Head's first solo LP. A rarity for this singer, it takes the form of a concept album. A songwriter found the diary of a stranger and wrote songs out of some fragments. The booklet reproduces pages of the fake diary along with the lyrics, weaving a believable fiction that helps in distancing or objectifying the autobiographical nature of the songs.
Montreal duo Chromeo have maintained the same blueprint from the start: '80s-inspired electro-funk brimming over with talkbox riffing, slap bass, neon synths, and catchy melodies to hold it all together. Their 2014 album, White Women, was Chromeo's high-water mark, finding their sound refined to the point where their sleazy retro-funk inspirations met with enough pop-minded songwriting design to push their often niche tunes into mainstream radio hit territory. Fifth album Head Over Heels attempts to re-create the formula that made White Women so beguiling, this time upping the ante with a who's who of special guest performers and producers…
Noise in Your Head is a new five-disc box set that brings together Toyah Willcox‘s three albums as ‘The Humans’ and presents them to a wider audience with a raft of bonus material.
Very few bands make it to their 11th album. Even fewer do so with the same fire and fury that defined their early years. But Machine Head isn't just any band. For over three decades, the personification of determination, Founder/Vocalist/Guitarist Robb Flynn, has led Machine Head on an uncompromising path - one fueled by defiance, reinvention, and a relentless pursuit of evolution. Now, with 'UNATØNED', they've once again sharpened their sound into its most direct and impactful form to date. Determined to challenge himself, Flynn set strict songwriting parameters for 'UNATØNED', shorter, more focused songs with a decidedly American feel, unconventional key changes, and shifting structures that break expectations. That self-imposed restraint resulted in a lean, unrelenting album that captures Machine Head at their most potent.